The present invention relates to a video surveillance equipment having functions for capturing pictures from an imaging apparatus such as a camera and detecting abnormalities and the like in a monitoring area by image recognition.
A video surveillance equipment having a function for detecting moving object that appear in a monitoring area by image recognition, such as persons and vehicles and the like can record only pictures on which a moving object appears by using detection results, and can call observer's attention by displaying warning icons on a display section or making a buzzer or the like sound. Accordingly, this type of video surveillance equipment is useful for reducing the burden for monitoring jobs in which confirmation has been needed at all times.
The above video surveillance equipment uses a known method of detecting changes in persons' motion and the like on pictures by comparing input images with a background image prepared in advance. In generally, this method is called the image subtraction method. The image subtraction method is used in many video surveillance equipment because the computational cost in the method is relatively low.
To detect a state in which a dangerous object or the like is left, a method of not only detecting changes on pictures but also recognizing, as a left object, an area in which changes from the background image are consecutively detected is disclosed in, for example Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei. 10-285586.